Writer · Lawyer
Elizabeth
Prochaska
Writer, human rights lawyer, founder of Birthrights, and author of the forthcoming Birth Story: A History of Power.
Debut non-fiction · 2027
Birth StoryA History of Power
From a painted cave in Palaeolithic France to the modern maternity ward, this is the history of birth — and the long struggle to control it.
Birth is usually treated as a private matter — a natural process or a medical one. Elizabeth Prochaska argues it has always been profoundly political: our original story of belonging, and the reason every society has tried to govern it. Drawing on history, philosophy and literature, and on her own life as a mother, lawyer and doula, she recovers birth as one of the great subjects of human history — an invitation to imagine a different story of birth, freedom and our capacity to begin again.
- United States
- Penguin Press
- 22 June 2027
- United Kingdom
- Jonathan Cape / Vintage
- 30 August 2027
About
Elizabeth Prochaska is a writer and human rights lawyer. She is the co-founder of Birthrights, the UK's leading authority on the rights of women and birthing people during pregnancy and childbirth. She was formerly Legal Director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She lives in London.